


no earthly tongue

by ephemeraltea (temporarily_obsessed)



Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 01:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30064692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarily_obsessed/pseuds/ephemeraltea
Summary: “Back again?” the boy asks mockingly. This time the flannel is blue and white with stripes of green, unbuttoned over the black shirt underneath. He’s sitting, leaning up against a tree whose branches are whispering almost within hearing above them. “Man, I don’t know why you keep coming back here.”“Must be your charm and conversation,” Adam suggests, and puts his hand against the rough bark of the tree. “Fills my dreams, I guess.”
Relationships: Adam Parrish/Blue Sargent (briefly), Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	no earthly tongue

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY. buckle up, folks- new fandom, same angst machine. 
> 
> special thanks to behindtheatlantic (on tumblr)/earthquaker (on AO3) for beta'ing this trainwreck!!

_“The moon is set. And the Pleiades._   
_It’s the middle of the night._   
_Time passes._   
_But I sleep alone.”_   
_\- Sappho, poem fragment 8_

The boy in Adam’s dream seems to him, sometimes, to be made of bits and pieces of every Aglionby boy he knows. The look of his face, the set of nose and forehead and the coloring, reminded him of one guy, a year ahead of himself and Gansey, the one Gansey will occasionally bolt after and have a brief intense, quiet argument with. The confident turn of his head to look at Adam over his shoulder is so like Gansey, and the dismissal is his gaze sometimes reminds Adam strongly of the kid two rows ahead of him in English. But every once in a while, like when the boy laughs suddenly, Adam knows there is something absolutely unique to him.

Every time, Adam can’t figure out what it is, and he always decides it just must be whatever is _Cabeswater_ about him. For all the mundane mannerisms Adam brought to him from the waking world, there was always something impossible and magic under his fair, porcelain-pink skin. Something from a dream world.

He’s been in every dream that Adam’s had since he sacrificed his hands and eyes, all of them from the first time they manifested as more than mist and the faint silhouettes of trees. There was a creek, quiet and clear, and in the moist dirt and the scuffed rocks, the boy was sat, cross-legged, letting his fingers brush the surface of the water.

He looked then the way he always would, with thoughtlessly expensive jeans, the knees worn thin and scuffs of earth brushed absently over the thighs. His hair was dark, almost black, in the cool green lighting of the forest, and it brushed against the collar of his shirt, usually a black tank or a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, but sometimes both. Sometimes he wore heavy stomping boots, like the kind Blue might wear with fishnet stockings or a lacy shirt, and other times his feet were bare, long and bony and solid, pale against the dirt of the forest floor.

“Back again?” the boy asks mockingly. This time the flannel is blue and white with stripes of green, unbuttoned over the black shirt underneath. He’s sitting, leaning up against a tree whose branches are whispering almost within hearing above them. “Man, I don’t know why you keep coming back here.”

“Must be your charm and conversation,” Adam suggests, and puts his hand against the rough bark of the tree. “Fills my dreams, I guess.”

The boy tilts his head back and laughs, loud and abrupt. “Yeah, sure, your dreams. Whatever you say. _In somnis veritas_ , and all that.”

“What’s supposed to be true here?” Adam says, mostly to himself at this point. “Are you supposed to tell me what Cabeswater wants, or something? What’s the point in taking over my dreams?”

“Yeah, sure. _I’m_ taking over _your_ dreams. At least you get a break,” the boy volleys back, thumping his head against the tree. Adam feels it vibrate under his palm. “Some of us are just here, man, it’s not like I got a to-do list. It’s all different now.”

Adam sighs, frustrated. It feels like there’s a truth just hovering out of his understanding. They stay there, silent, for a while, an unimaginable and unpassing amount of time. Then the boy sits up.

“What?” Adam says, startled. The boy ignores him for a second, and he takes the time to stand. It’s the first time Adam can recall them standing so close. Most of the time at least one of them is sitting, or else they’re separated by things, trees and boulders and bodies of water. With an almost dizzy distance, Adam realizes the boy is taller than he is. Not by much, a few inches, but there’s also a bulk to him that he never noticed, either. Adam is strong, because he has to be, but all his muscle is fine and wired close to the bone. Even his flesh knew better than to take up too much space. “What happened?”

“Someone’s here,” the boy mutters faintly. He sets his jaw. “The Thief.”

“I’m sorry, _what_?” This dream has taken a turn for the surreal. It feels… tense.

The boy turns, sharp and sudden, and starts marching wildly towards some secret point in the forest. Without meaning to, Adam matches his speed and keeps just a pace behind.

“ _Et non receperint,_ ” the boy hisses, “ _Hoc est locus furibus._ ”

Furiously, Adam mentally translates. “’Not welcome’?” He speeds up as the boy does, weaving through a copse of paper birch trees. “’Not a place for thieves’? What does that mean?”

At that, the boy throws a look over his shoulder at Adam, imperious and scornful. “I don’t understand what part of me decided you needed to play translator, dreamboy.”

“You’re lucky I’m taking Latin as an elective,” he shoots back, irritated. _What’s that supposed to mean?_ “Not everyone just keeps that kind of skill in their back pocket.”

The boy huffs. “I can’t deal with you right now. I can’t keep talking to you and focus to find him.”

“Find who? What are you talking about?”

Just as quickly as he’d started off into the forest, the boy stops. He glances around, an unfurtive and arrogant gesture. “I wish I could just send you away,” he says quietly, but the tone is rough.

“Well, it looks like we’re both stuck for the time being. Care to fill me in on the emergency?”

The boy shakes his head; not in disagreement, it seems, but at a loss.

“The forest doesn’t have enough,” he says. He sounds brittle and fragile, like supercooled steel. “And I don’t know where I go when the forest is drained.”

An unhappy ripple runs through the air around them, and the boy frowns viciously. “Get out!”

When Adam blinks, it’s the shitty break room at the trailer factory he sees. He looks down at his watch, disoriented, and with that Adam realizes he fell asleep on his dinner break.

It’s the first time he’s dreamed of Cabeswater during daylight hours. It’s the first time he can remember the details of their conversation after, instead of just feelings and images. It feels important, but Adam is tired and hungry and he still has four hours of work left. He puts it aside in his mind, and pulls out his sad, slightly squished sandwich half to finish eating in the ten minutes he has left on his break.

The reality of his life, as it always does, leaves a cold imprint on his bones. He finishes the sandwich.

________________________________________

He’s biking home, his brain thinking so hard on so many different things that all he can translate is a burning static. It’s so consuming that he almost passes the rusted and familiar park a few blocks from the trailer before he realizes Blue is waiting there for _him_.

Waiting for him. It feels impossible, and it leaves a sweet taste in the back of his mouth. Blue, with her wild fashion and serious brow and delicate hands, waiting for him. She’s reading a super saver from the supermarket, her eyes idling passing through whatever is on offer this week. She looks up when he stops his bike, and she raises her eyebrows as if to say, well?

Everything about her seems to be made to make his heart thrum a little harder. He wants to grab her hand and place a kiss on her lips, and he has to stop himself from just doing it. He’s been hit enough in his lifetime; he doesn’t think he needs that to make his day worse.

She’s sitting on a swing, the chains warm to the touch and a little damp from the Virginian air when he grabs a hold of one of them.

“Any good sales?” he says, which would be inane if he said it to Gansey or Noah or anyone else. Blue grins at him.

“Nothing on yogurt, but frozen peas have a special,” she says, a little flippantly, and he feels entranced by the quirk of her mouth as she says it. He sits down on the rubbery seat of the swing next to hers; it’s set a bit lower than hers is, and his head still rests several inches above hers. Adam wonders if she did that on purpose. It seems like something she’d do. Something she’d think about.

He wishes he could have more than these snatched moments. “I have to be home soon,” he says, and he tries not to sound upset about it. Since he spent the night at the hospital, his father has kept a closer eye on when Adam’s working and when he should be available to Robert’s moods.

“I just came to say hello before my shift,” Blue replies, but there’s something in her expression that makes Adam feel like she sees too deep.

“So,” he says in the quiet that follows.

“So,” she replies. “Anything new at work?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t feel like telling her he fell asleep at work, dreamed of Cabeswater kicking him out, and then stubbed his toe against a doorframe before leaving the factory; like any of it was anything worth sharing. They sit in silence, the only noises the clinking of the swing chains as they hover next to each other.

In a moment of bravery, he grabs her hand. She lets him, though she looks just a touch startled for a moment. Adam can’t bring himself to squeeze her hand, and even the thought of it isn’t satisfying. He wants to hold her. He wants to kiss her. The look on her face says not to even try.

“Why can’t I kiss you?” Adam blurts out, and in without meaning to, he clutches her hand tighter. Just as he’d been too afraid to a moment before. Just as well – Blue snatches her hand away and stands up. Her face is a slowly-brewing storm cloud.

“Why do I need a reason?” she snaps. She crosses her arms over her chest, and for a moment Adam is distracted by the thought. It’s a very short moment. “I said _no_.”

“You said that six weeks ago,” Adam says, and if he had more energy he thinks it would sound angrier. Instead, to his horror, it sounds… sad. Pitiable.

Blue touches her mouth with the tips of her fingers, but she doesn’t look any less irritated. “Sometimes people say the things they mean, Adam. For all that you expect everyone else to take you at your boundaries, you sure like to push at other people’s.”

With that, Adam feels a lot less tired and a lot more angry. “Fine, I guess.”

There’s another quiet moment. Adam stares at his feet, at the worn edges of his sneakers and where they meet the dirt and little patches of untrimmed grass. He hears her exhale; for a second he thinks she’s going to sit down again, but instead she takes a breath in and starts talking, right from where she’s standing, a scant step away from the swing he found her on.

“Why can’t you accept that people care about you in different ways than you care about them?”

She sounds sad, just a little, and it makes the corner of his vision go hazy with something that feels a lot like rage but quieter.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he tries to say, but the words come out hissed and furious.

“Of course you don’t,” Blue sighs at him, and the irritated edge is back in her voice. She takes another noisy breath, softens the edges of her words. “Of course you don’t. And I don’t know how to be someone who gets you there. Who gets you to understand. Who can understand you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He says.

“I don’t know you, Adam. I don’t think you want anyone to – and I can’t be the person who changes you like that. I don’t know how, and I’m beginning to think I never will. That I’m not the person you want me to be.”

“I like you as you are just fine,” he tries. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling in this moment, exactly, but it feels a little bit like the wake of calm days after his dad has really let loose and winds down from the peak of his anger. Disquieted, maybe, and lonely. A little broken but afraid of what comes after. Blue is shaking her head.

“I guess I mean that I can’t be the person you need.”

The quiet again. A small ocean of silence, between them.

“It’s not gonna be us, Adam.”

In a few minutes, he’ll stand up and get back on his bike. He’ll head the last few blocks home, and he’ll get in the trailer and make himself change clothes. In a few minutes. First, Blue walks away, and he watches her. Then he needs a minute to remember how to use his legs, and his feet, and his hands.

Adams stands up.

The sight of his hands wrapping around the handlebars of his bike, the fingers chapped and calm and sure, throws him back into the night he’d like most to forget in his whole, misfired, tired life. So much of the day had been nothing special at all, just another replayed episode in _work-school-work-home_ , a little bonus friendship he’d never expected thrown in, for almost free. Until the sight of Robert, in the crooked doorway of the trailer, waiting, paystubs in hand and rage curled up in every bone of his body.

He always looked like a threat, to Adam; just then he’d looked like something a lot bigger.

No matter how much Adam tries, he can’t remember exactly how their conversation went. He knows it’s probably the concussion he had afterwards, not to mention the way panic always makes his mind go blank for a horrible second to begin with. He remembers looking up just as his father hit him, the force of the blow tipping him over and sending his head at the railing.

He does remember the sound in his head when it hit. A noise, one he’d never quite heard before, like a gong and shotgun and a crying animal, all at once, just between his ears. And then a deep, quiet pounding, a thrumming noise straight from his heart to his ears. Ear. No noises except that drum-beat of blood, and then a ringing that turned into a vicious silence that killed everything else.

The sight of vomit on the porch. The blood at the tips of his fingers. A blurry memory of Robert, yelling but somehow noiseless, bracing to kick. It dissolves into snapshots of moments, at best, and then… then it breaks off into nothing. The next thing Adam can remember that makes sense, that stitches together with the narrative he can understand later, is leaning against the one payphone, six blocks from the park, fingers trembling as he touches numbers with trembling fingers.

Gansey. First his voice, cheerful and tired, then very suddenly afraid and intense. Urgent. If it was anyone else, Adam would have called it hysterical, but nothing about Gansey allowed for that sort of inelegance.

_Parrish. Adam. Adam, where are you. Adam, I can’t hear you, and if I don’t know where to look… I don’t want to go to the trailer, Adam… Adam, please, where are you…_

He’d closed his eyes. For a moment, it felt like, and it certainly wasn’t meant to be any longer, but when he opened them the Subaru headlights were turning Gansey into a holy silhouette, a hand reaching towards Adam like he was expecting to be pushed away.

And oh, Adam wanted to push him away, just as much as he wanted to take his hand. Either of those took more energy than he had. When his eyes opened again, Gansey was waking him up at the front of the emergency room.

Later, he’d been furious. That hadn’t been Gansey’s call to make, but it wasn’t as if Adam had been in any position to stop him. At the time he’d felt something closer to emptied.

( _So what else is new?_ a nasty part of his mind reminded him. _What in your life have you ever controlled?_ )

It was easy enough to decide, like that, that he had nothing to lose. Nothing in Adam’s life belonged to himself. Not his body – that seemed only to serve as a punching bag or charity case, nothing in between. What did it matter, if he gave pieces of it away? At least it could be on his terms. At least then it might mean something, that Whelk didn’t get the ley line’s favor.

It was beginning to feel like the only things of value Adam had were only worth something detached from him.

**Author's Note:**

> you can yell at me in the comments, or on my tumblr (@ephemeraltea)!


End file.
